Papr:kut
by Ian McLachlan
In a home for the elderly, in the suburbs of London, Stephen is waiting to die. His anxious ruminations on the past, and on a future that will go on without him after his death, are interrupted by the arrival of Elsha, once a famous poet, now a victim of Alzheimer’s. But can he adapt to the change that she brings?
Meanwhile, Jason, an eighteen-year-old nu-metalhead, is arriving in a new country, Italy. Insecure, experience-hungry, and eager to experiment, he is running away from an unhappy home, carrying with him an onerous secret, and hoping to create a better life for himself.
Papr:kut is a novel about survival: how the past survives in us, and how we survive in the present.